Thursday, April 2, 2015

Easter Egg Decorating, With Lace and Paper

Thought I was done and needed little more tatting. Also added a spray acrylic after removed from egg.

added next little row with yellow flowers, then I put the two together with beads and wire :)

Still need to add a clear coat but I enjoy these paper napkin decorating if you stick to a couple rules this is fun and easy.

Poke hole in raw egg both ends and blow the center out and rinse with water, let dry.

Use one layer of napkin, cut a general length top to bottom, then measure by holding paper to egg wrap around middle and cut paper to fit around widest part of egg then make a kind of picket fence look to paper so it will be fitted to egg. Paint school glue round the middle of egg and wrap egg.

hold in middle and paint glue one strip at a time, and this covers hole let dry and top coat when done

Both eggs turned out great! I've kicked around the idea of doing something like your lace egg but never got to the point of working out the details of how to get there. Maybe if I start now I'd have a couple ready for next year... I like how you did the paper egg. Never thought of doing it in one piece like that. That one I may have time to try yet this year.

I came over to thank you for your lovely comment on my blog, and was delighted to see this post! Your 3D egg is wonderful, and your tutorial has helped tatters to see how it can be accomplished!

Back in 1991 I was obsessed with doing 3-D tatting, and one of my happy triumphs was a 3-D egg. I showed them on my 'egg tree' on my April 3, 2010 blog post, and said I was going to explain how I did it. Unfortunately I have a bad habit of not 'following through' with my promises. Mine aren't nearly as complicated a pattern as yours (just hens and chicks and rings and chains), and are joined in only six places by sewing a pearl to the connecting picots with sewing thread, after each half was dry, which is not an ideal thing to do, but it did work, although I always worry that the beads won't hold, and sewing them on could cause the picots to break.

However, I wanted you to know that you can use one of those plastic eggs that are split horizontally for putting candy in, and use each separate half as the 'mold' for the egg shape. That way you can stiffen both tatted egg pieces at the same time and let them dry sitting on the table. But first wrap each 'hollow' plastic egg half tightly with plastic wrap, and just fold under the excess plastic wrap inside each 'egg' half. It's very easy to remove tatting from the plastic wrap after the tatting dries by pulling the plastic away from the tatting. (I also use plastic wrap over my Styrofoam bell forms and ball forms.. The Styrofoam forms allow the use of pins to help with shaping, and the plastic wrap releases the tatting fairly easily.) . .My big goal, however, is to do my eggs and Christmas balls a different way, by using a well known 'balloon trick' so that I could tat them 'in one piece', then dip them in the stiffener, then insert a small balloon and blow into it and 'secure it' tightly (using a clamp), then pop the balloon after the stiffener dries. This is an old crochet trick, and sounds a little messy, but I've been wanting to try it!

Thank You, an love your explaining the details and love your comments. Years ago I used the balloons and just wrapped string around randomly, and I wanted to tat around a balloon an pop it to show how it worked but I guess that will be next year hopefully :) now we have this for all who wants to try. Thanks again from Carollyn.